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Greenscreen Fabric
Hey all,
I need to purchase a green screen (10’x10′ or larger is about right). I’ve used them in the past and have always used either high end “foam style” that you find in grip trucks and rental houses, or a more soft-cloth based style. When I look online, I see the expensive foam ones, vinyl, paper seamless, and muslin.
I need the screen to be portable and compact so vinyl and paper seamless are out. I believe that muslin is stiff and wrinkles easily, like a lot of photography backdrops. Is that right?
Can anyone tell me where I can find the soft, thinner fabric of chroma green that I know exists, or what it is called? I fear I may think muslin is what it is not, but I thought muslin was somewhat stiff. My preference is to order from B&H.
I know exactly what fabric I want, but I know it only by feel, not by name, so it’s hard to know what I’m looking at online.
Any and all help is appreciated,
Tony
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4 Replies
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We’ve got a nice 10×20′ greenscreen backdrop we’ve used for years… I don’t even remember where we got it, but it was pretty darn expensive.
Last year we needed another one that size because we were doing a greenscreen shoot in a huge area that we needed to cover. Sort of as an experiment, I ordered one of these…
https://www.tubetape.net/servlet/the-7/screen-greenscreen-background-10/Detail
…because they were super inexpensive. If figured it was worth testing, and minimal cash outlay in case it was a dud and I needed to get something better.
I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality. It’s just as good as the one we paid a lot more for. It is (I think) thin cotton muslin. It doesn’t wrinkle too badly, and if you can hang it at least the day before your shoot most if not all of the wrinkles will fall out. We also keep a pump-up bottle full of anti-wrinkle liquid handy for when we need it in a hurry, but rarely have to use it.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I always like to plug RoseBrand out of New York. Their cloth comes in several varieties including a spandex base that is extra-wide.
They will also send you actual swatches to test with if you ask them. The material I like is similar to car headliner material, a light, thin foamlike layer sandwich that rejects wrinkling and is matte in finish.
Digital Juice also had a nice chromakey setup on sale recently.
Wlagreens sells cheap portsable suit steamers that are always handy to have in the studio for this job as well as touching up wrinkles in guest’s outfits.
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On our 25′ x 20′ muslin backdrop we use a pump spray bottle, the kind used for pesticides that you pump up and spray the back of the drop with warm water. When it drys…no wrinkles and no chemical used. I actually drape it from the grid in a big “U” shape to get all the surfaces.
Mark D’Agostino
http://www.synergeticproductions.com -
That’s exactly what we do too, Mark… a pesticide pump-it-up-with-air bottle. We buy the biggest bottles of the no-wrinkle stuff from the dollar store (a lot cheaper there) and fill it up.
I only de-wrinkled with the stuff ONE time before going to the pump-up arrangment…. after my fingers were about to fall off from using the regular spray trigger straight-from-the-store bottle to spray a 10×20 drop.
Works like a charm.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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